THRICE UPON A TIME, THE INVADERS AND THE TRASH WILL COME TO US
Looks like Lea can't wait to poke fun of trash shooting.
SPACE INVADERS MARATHON
PART I - Super Destronaut DX-2
PART II - Space Invaders Gigamax 4SE
TRASHFALL II
PART I - The Pig D - Sheep P - Chick C
PART II - The Ketchup Story by Webnetic
Time to continue with the Space Invaders marathon. While I keep writing the Space Invaders Extreme and Arkanoid VS Space Invaders reviews that I had in progress (blame the "Trashfall" for that), here's Space Invasion by Pix Arts.
Trash Invaders
Space Invasion is a bad ripoff of Taito's Classic shmup Space Invaders. At first the gameplay is pretty much the same, just shoot the Invaders before they touch the ground. Sounds simple and basic already, but in this game is splitted in two modes. The first one is the "Destroyer Alert", in this phase you have to take all the Invaders within the time limit before the Destroyer appears and destroys the area, something that's gonna happen very often and that's because of the critical flaws that plague the controls, which I'll mention later, but let's keep talking about the Destroyer Alert mode. With a time limit pushing you, is there any benefit for clearing all the Invaders before time hits zero?
Got a 1up with those points, use it wisely.
Clearing the Destroyer Alert grants you a 20,000 point bonus and a 1up since I think I've reached the score requirement to earn one.
One final word of advice, You will only be able to finish the first Destroyer Alert with very small chances of doing it.
Even the Activision version of Space Invaders was better than this.
Once the Destroyer Alert is over, you're now in the regular gameplay, which tries to resemble more of the Activision version of Space Invaders as we have a few power ups including rapid firing Auto-cannons, the Infinity Beam which takes 4 enemies in a vertical line, and the Flak, this one is the worst because despite its explosive capability of taking 4 Invaders, you have to calculate its firing distance as if it was a slingshot of some sorts, making it tedious and frustrating.
¿Remember what I've said about the controls? Well, this is where the problems hit the game. BADLY. Since the Beam Cannon was replaced with a missile truck you can't just move left right freely like Space Invaders does, forcing you to accelerate while moving right, then decelerate and turn to move to the left, that consumes time and sometimes makes you a sitting duck, and this is one of those games where taking two simultaneous hits take two hit points away. The dreaded Turridamage strikes back, and there's even attacks that result on instant death. This makes you wonder ¿Why do I need a life bar?. In another case of idiocy, some of the weapons are useless. The autocannon is WEAKER than the default projectile. You need to hit a "popcorn" Invader with three Autocannon hits to kill it, wasting valious ammunition. The game throws you medium Invaders that take multiple hits to die, making things harder than they should be. The strategy of "pierce your shields and shoot through the hole" is out of the question as the barrier takes a lot of hits to destroy one of the mini-blocks that comprises it. But the nail that seals the coffin is that if you lose all your lives its Game Over and you have to go all the way back to Zone 001, and keep in mind, the trophies require you to finish Zone 012, a feat that's impossible with the mentioned flaws. I feel sorry for those who bought this for some quick trophies.
STAY COOL!
SOMEONE WAKES THE NOISE UP!
After clearing the regular Invaders wave, it's you against the Destroyer. This is a boss battle where you have to take down the giant Invader by hitting it on the middle section or clip off its wings, but also the boss plays unfair as it throws you grenades that spread fire lines to the sides, requiring you to jump. Yeah, your truck can jump or shoud I say "hop" to make an attempt at dodging the blast, but most of the times you'll end up taking the hit.
How...Original...
Like with Top Gun: Air Combat which was a re-branding of Air Gun Fighter, Space Invasion is a re-release of Space Aliens Invaders. Zero creativity, just rename the damn thing and sell it on the PlayStations 4 & 5.
Graphics, well, they're just trash. ¿How you can notice and appreciate ship detailings when they look like a deformed green mass?, The same goes for your small white truck that replaces the classic Beam Cannon. The background looks like a poor ripoff of the digital text from The Matrix. As for the music, well, is also forgettable too.
TRIVIA INVASION
- Space Invasion shares the same name as the censored European port of Capcom's Commando which replaced the human soldiers with robots.
- The game was not developed by Pix Arts, it was actually developed by Just Gameware as Advanced Invaders and later renamed as Binary Void. Pix Arts just ripped off the game claiming to be the developer.
Shizuka is right this time.
This was a disaster, Nina.
This turned out to be more trash than I expected. Now I'm really upset with this. This is not just a bad shmup and a bad Space Invaders clone, this is the mother of all ripoffs, and to put it simple, I'm extremely disappointed with Pix Arts 'cos that means all their catalogue is basically from someone else without giving credit. ¿Pix Arts? More like Pix RATS.
Review's over. Grab the rusty nails and the hammers, Nadia Vivie is asking us to nail the staff of Pix Rats to a [EXPLETIVE] cross.
Well, damn. This game really broke the scales today.